How Much Did the Partisan Fake News & Tech Giants Aid Democrats in the Midterm Elections?

What impact did the anti-Trump, anti-GOP bias of the Fake News media complex, together with the leftward tilt of the Google-Facebook-Twitter complex, and deep-pocket Democrat donors have on the recent midterm elections? It’s difficult to say with any precision at this point, since data regarding many aspects of these factors is not yet available.

But what is evident thus far is that Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Money dramatically aided the Democrats — and the more liberal-left Democrats, at that — in many races. Despite these huge advantages in the form of support from the “mainstream” media and the social media titans, along with an historic fundraising frenzy that saw Democrats greatly outspending Republicans, the party of Obama-Clinton-Pelosi-Schumer failed to pull off the “progressive” Blue Wave that many so-called experts predicted.

Yes, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters & Co. are going to be back in control of the House of Representatives come January, which is, undoubtedly, a frightening thought to millions of Americans. The Democrats picked up at least 26 House seats, and that could grow to 28 or 30 by the time recounts are finalized. However, considering historical precedents and the predictions of even bigger GOP House losses than actually occurred, President Trump was not out of line in declaring the results a victory. It is more usual than not for the party in control of the White House to lose seats in the House and/or Senate in the midterm elections. In the 1994 midterms, Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats and Barack Obama lost 63 in the 2010 midterms.

Considering the relentless demonization of Trump and the GOP by Big Media and Big Social Media, and seen in historical context, Trump’s House losses are relatively modest. According to a tabulation of evening newscasts of the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) during the eight-week pre-election period of September 1 through October 26, media coverage was overwhelmingly anti-Trump and anti-Republican.

“Not only was network coverage of Republicans far more hostile (88% negative) than that meted out to Democrats (53% negative), but we found nearly ten times more negative statements about Republicans and President Trump (97) than all of the Democratic candidates combined (10),” the Media Research Center (MRC) reported. “In fact, coverage of the entire field of Democratic candidates would have been 67 percent positive if it hadn’t been for negative comments in stories about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test,” the study noted.

The study reviewed “all 1,007 evening news stories (1,960 minutes of airtime) about the Trump administration on ABC, CBS and NBC from June 1 to September 30, tallying the coverage of each topic and all evaluative comments made by anchors, reporters and non-partisan sources (such as voters or experts).”

“The results show,” says the MRC report, “that, over the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia. The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one percent of the four-month total).”

Details of the MRC report include the observation that “Once again, the ongoing Russia investigation received more evening news coverage (342 minutes) than any other individual topic. This does not include the 86 minutes spent on the Michael Cohen investigation and guilty plea, except for a few minutes talking about the possibility that Cohen would cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller.” That network coverage was 97 percent negative, even though Mueller’s “investigation” has produced nothing to back the claims that Trump or Team Trump colluded with Russia.

“Since the beginning of the Trump administration,” the MRC report continues, “the three networks have spent 1,975 minutes — nearly 33 hours — on the Russia investigation, or nearly 18 percent of all of their coverage of the Trump presidency. As we have previously reported, virtually all of that coverage has been negative, while almost none of it has focused on any of the controversies involving Mueller or his investigative team.”

This non-stop negativism by the press, portraying President Trump as evil incarnate, has produced multiple effects, most of which redound down-ballot to the advantage of the Democrats. Besides helping them motivate donors to chip in enormous sums of campaign cash, it has helped the Democrats field an historically large contingent of well-funded challengers. It also has helped stoke the fires of the violent, far-left Antifa protesters, as well as swell the ranks of Democrat voters and volunteers from the perpetually propagandized high school and college students.

The blatant anti-Trump, anti-GOP, anti-conservative bias of the three main network broadcasters is echoed by much of the rest of the “mainstream” media, and is often even worse. CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, TIME, Newsweek, etc. all seem to be competing to outdo one another in media’s 24/7/365 anti-Trump hate fest.

This media onslaught against Trump, the GOP, and conservatives was not restricted to the House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. Even a liberty-minded state legislator who is outspoken and demonstrates strong leadership qualities can end up getting the full smear treatment from the national and international press, as state Represenative Matt Shea of Washington State found out. In our November 6 report, “Big Media Launch Last-Minute Election Hit Pieces on Washington State Rep. Matt Shea,” we noted that Shea was the unenviable recipient of a full-blast smear campaign that included hit pieces from not only local and statewide media, but also from the Associated Press, Newsweek, Huffington Post, Rolling Stone, The Hill, the New York Daily News, The Guardian (UK), Al Jazeera, and the Irish Times. Despite this extraordinary media ambuscade, Shea won reelection, taking 58.3 percent of the vote.

Then there’s the Google-Facebook-Twitter complex and its social media comrades in Silicon Valley. With more and more people getting their news through social media, the controls exercised by the Big tech titans have become a major concern. It may be remembered that billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged during testimony before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees last April that the tech industry in Silicon Valley is an "extremely left-leaning place." But, he assured the senators, he tries to make sure his firm doesn’t “have bias in the work that we do.” Facebook, he said, is “a platform for all ideas.”

Senator Ted Cruz was not convinced. "Mr. Zuckerberg, I will say there are a great many Americans, who I think are deeply concerned that Facebook and other tech companies are engaged in a pervasive pattern of bias and political censorship,” Cruz said.

Cruz went on, citing specific troubling cases: "There have been numerous instances with Facebook," Cruz said. "In May of 2016, Gizmodo reported that Facebook had purposefully and routinely suppressed conservative stories from trending news, including stories about CPAC, including stories about Mitt Romney, including stories about the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, including stories about Glenn Beck. In addition to that, Facebook has initially shut down the ‘Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day' page, has blocked a post of a Fox News reporter, has blocked over two dozen Catholic pages, and most recently, blocked Trump supporters Diamond and Silk's page with 1.2 million Facebook followers, after determining their content and brand were, ‘unsafe to the community.' To a great many Americans, that appears to be a pervasive pattern of political bias."

"Senator, let me say a few things about this," Zuckerberg began, in response. "First, I understand where that concern is coming from because Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place. And this is actually a concern that I have and that I try to root out in the company is making sure that we don't have any bias in the work that we do, and I think it is a fair concern that people would at least wonder about."

Is it simply an extraordinary coincidence that a great many of these sites happen to be of a conservative, constitutionalist, libertarian, or pro-life bent, and that they are supportive of President Trump and/or many of his policies? And is it another huge coincidence that this “deplatforming” of conservatives began during the months leading into the critical midterm elections? Facebook is not alone; the other major social media platforms have followed suit.

Reality seems to be clashing with the denials of Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley denizens who insist that they are not engaged in political partisanship and censorship of views opposed to their “extremely left-leaning” agenda. As we reported in October (“Big Tech Employees Spend Wildly on Dems Ahead of Midterms”), Federal Election Commission filings show that the employees of the three most influential tech companies — Google, Facebook and Twitter — have contributed millions of dollars in the recent midterms, with over 90 percent of it going to Democrat candidates. This is a continuation of the 2016 election trend that saw the Big Tech money and in-kind contributions going to Hillary Clinton and her Democratic comrades.

Big Money-Dark Money Funding Radical Dems

“Democrats ride monster fundraising to take the House, GOP successfully picks its Senate battles.” That’s the title of November 7 post-mortem of the midterms by OpenSecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics. Far-left Democrat Rep. Roberto “Beto” O’Rourke, campaigning as a populist who eschewed Big Money donors, was the champion spender for the midterms, dumping more than $70 million into his effort to unseat Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Despite outspending Cruz 2 to 1, and despite enjoying millions of dollars more in free publicity from an adoring media that presented him as a rock star and romantic idealist, Beto lost out to Cruz.

The Democrat’s cash tsunami did, however, buy a number of House seats. Money isn’t everything in a campaign, but it does matter. “In what was the most expensive midterm election ever, a cash advantage didn’t always translate to success at the polls for congressional candidates,” the Open Secrets report notes. “Still, the candidate with more money won most of the time, and fundraising and outside spending trends appear to match up with election results.”

Open Secrets reports that “Democrats soundly took the House while outraising Republicans by more than $300 million. Republicans picked up several seats in the Senate despite being outraised overall, but in key toss-up Senate races in red states, candidate fundraising and outside spending totals were generally close.”

“Eighty-nine percent of House races were won by the biggest spender, compared to 84 percent of Senate races,” the report continues. “When factoring in outside money and fundraising, the House candidate supported by more money won 91 percent of the time and the better-funded Senate candidate won 84 percent of the time.”

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